The Chief Counsel office (IRS) recently released a memorandum, which comes to two primary conclusions. First, under the fair market value standard, the hypothetical willing buyer and willing seller of a company would consider a pending merger when valuing stock for gift tax purposes. Second, the retained interest is not a qualified annuity interest under § 2702 of the Internal Revenue Code (Code) because the donor used an outdated appraisal that did not take into account all the facts and circumstances of a pending merger. Read more >>

The bestselling Business Valuation and Bankruptcy: Case Law Compendium is out now and is in its third edition. This must-have resource is replete with hard-won insights into the often challenging intersection of law and valuation. It summarizes case law and provides insightful analysis on a range of bankruptcy topics. Read more >>

It appears that the courts are rejecting Daubert standard and FRE 702 challenges more frequently. Take a deep dive into potential reasons for this with our legal editor, Jim Alerding. Read more >>

Is anything “company-specific” per se? Company-specific risk is not an ideal name for this risk. All firms face company-specific risks, many of which are somewhat similar across industries and companies. For example, how many firms have you valued that had to deal with the risk of customer concentration? Read more >>

Lately, there has been chatter about the demand for experienced business valuation forensic litigation specialists exceeding the supply of such people. Read more >>

Estate planning can be a risky business. Some of those risks were on full display in a recent tax case, Nelson v. Comm'r. Read more >>

Recently, a district court in Hawaii has ruled in favor of the trustees and sponsors in a case that is getting a lot of attention, Walsh v. Bowers, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 177184. The Department of Labor sued the defendants, which included two individual owners. read on to dive a little deeper into the details of this fascinating case! Read more >>

The 2021 Discount for Lack of Marketability Study provides objective rate of return measures to implement the Johnson/Park empirical method for determining a discount for lack of marketability (DLOM) for the valuation of interests in privately held corporations and partnerships. This report instantly provides you with the most current DLOM rate of return information including a thorough explanation and example on how to apply these data. Read more >>

Recently a court in Arizona rejected the use of a calculation report, but an appellate court ruled it was wrong to do so and sent the case back to the lower court. The reasoning for this decision strikes at a broader question: is calculated value admissible in court? Read more >>

The courts in the past few years have been sprinkled with cases dealing with whether a discount for lack of control (DLOC) or marketability (DLOM) should be applied in the case of a shareholder buyout. Read more >>

Valuing intangible business assets can be overwhelming at times. Between the different approaches and the myriad factors that go into each, it’s easy to miss a step. BVR’s recently released third edition of Benchmarking Identifiable Intangibles and Their Useful Lives in Business Combinations seeks to provide context to this dizzying array of factors with a look at the different approaches for valuing intangible assets—as well as empirical data from actual valuations. Read more >>

The Department of Labor (DOL) has a long history of challenging transactions involving company owners selling some or all of their interests to an ESOP. The most common challenge is to the value the trustees approved for executing the sale of company stock held by owners to the ESOP. Read more >>

Hi, I am Jim Alerding, CPA/ABV. Many of you know me from my presentations and articles over the years. I have over 40 years of experience in business valuation and litigation services. I started in 1980 in the BV and testimony arenas. Since my first case was a valuation for a divorce case in which I then testified, I started in BV and Litigation Support at the same time. Read more >>

BVR’s recent survey on methodology and practice for estimating a discount for lack of marketability (DLOM) garnered over 200 responses. After analyzing the results, we identified several red flags that were worthy of further exploration. Read on to learn more! Read more >>

BIZCOMPS, a comprehensive online database with financial details on small, Main Street private companies, has been recently updated with new transactions, and the current BIZCOMPS/BVR Deal Review (BDR), exclusively for subscribers, is now available. This special publication analyzes general trends, valuation multiples, and operating ratios for transactions in the database. Get a sneak peek at the Summer 2021 issue with highlights including harmonic mean and median sale price, median SDE/rent, and more. Read more >>

One of the lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis is that a coherent narrative is more important than ever in business valuation, says Dr. Aswath Damodaran, of New York University Stern School of Business, who gave the keynote address at the CBV Congress 2021. A valuation needs a marriage of narrative and numbers, Damodaran says. In a good valuation, the numbers are “bound together” by a coherent narrative, and storytelling is kept grounded with numbers. Too much emphasis on numbers can make valuations mere “plug-and-point exercises” that may be perceived to be sales pitches or a confirmation of preconceived values. Read more >>

In BVR’s recent webinar, Cryptocurrency Fraud and Forensics: What Valuation Professionals Need to Know, forensic and cryptocurrency experts Katerina Gaebel and Mark DiMichael, both of Citrin Cooperman, covered various hot topics on fraud and forensic accounting issues in digital assets and how they affect the business valuation profession. Here, we summarize five key areas where one would find proof of crypto asset fraud in a marital dispute, including interviews, tax returns, bank accounts, credit card statements, and more. Read more >>

In the May issue of the Economic Outlook Update (EOU), the publication added data highlighting the wholesale trade segment of the U.S. economy, putting a spotlight on the data the U.S. Census published. The report highlights the sales totals of merchant wholesalers for April 2021, which included adjustments for seasonal variations and trading day differences. The report showed an improvement in wholesale trade in April 2021 when compared to March 2021 and from one year ago. In April, total sales were $570.8 billion, or 0.8% higher than the revised March level and 43.6% higher than the level from one year ago. Read more >>

When Michael Jackson died, his image and likeness was besmirched and yet, once competent executors took charge, they were able to make a lot of money for the estate in the immediate post-death years. The issue was to what extent this subsequent development could factor into the image-and-likeness valuation. In explaining his high valuation, the IRS’ expert offered a theory of “foreseeable opportunities” that the U.S. Tax Court found unpersuasive. Read more >>

For years, the valuation profession has debated the definition of a control premium, including its distinction from an acquisition premium. What began years ago as a relatively simple question—if there is a control premium, what should it be?—now includes analyzing such concepts as invested capital premiums and equity-based premiums, transaction synergies and strategic values, marketability, and levels of control. All are “key points” to keep in mind throughout the quantification of a control premium, say Tim Meinhart and Nate Novak (both of Willamette Management Associates), who led a webinar on this topic titled Evaluating and Applying Control Premiums earlier this year. Read more >>